Second Wind: Rushing!

So now that the bulk of my weapons is done on this project, I can now focus on creating a second level, implementing pick-ups and polishing up all the feedback for the game. If I have enough time at the end of all this, I can then try and figure out how to implement a basic scoreboard. Fortunately I’ve already had prior experience on everything except for the scoreboard in previous projects and classes so I’m confident I’ll be able to achieve everything fairly quickly and without too much fuss.

First thing I decided to work on was creating a second level as I needed a little bit of a breather from coding. With my first level being an open map for the player to explore I decided to create the second level as a single room arena where enemies constantly spawn. The objective with this level is simply to keep killing enemies until you run out of bullets or die, or both. Working with unity was a lot easier or simpler then working with the UDK4 that I’m used to. The terrain editor and asset store made the level creation very easy and quick. I imported and implemented a number of buildings and vegetation assets and quickly found myself getting carried away. By the time I had finished I had racked up about 6 hours and 1.3 gig. I decided to stop at this point.

Now that the second level was finished, I began implementing pick-ups and feedback. Pick-ups were a very quick process due to my previous project although in this assessment I had to create a damage modifier pick-up and a speed boost pickup. It was at this point I had a eureka moment! When I tried to figure out the damage modifier pick-up, I realised that each of my weapons had their own unique variable for the exact same things. For instance, my pistol weapon had variables for ammo amount, damage, rate of fire etc. but so did my machine gun and missile launcher. I realised that instead of having a massive wall of code I could’ve just made it all generic and saved myself a hell of a lot of time. I made a generic damage variable that covered all my weapons and implemented the damage pick-up successfully.

After finishing all my pick-ups I now had the monumental task of creating all the feedback required. This included sounds, particle effects, and GUI notifications as well as a HUD. This was all very simple but took me 2 full days to finish to a polished level. My health bar took longer then I expected as my original formula was divisional. I kept getting ‘can’t divide by zero’ errors. Took me a few hours to realise what was happening and rearrange the formula so it was a multiply instead of divide. Maths kids, stay in school.

By the time I finished everything it was late Thursday night with the project due tomorrow, I was beat. Exhausted after so many long days building this game. I tried to implement a basic scoreboard using player preferences, but the code was a bit beyond my tired eyes. I’ve done most of the brief and I’m confident in the short time I’ve had that I’ll get a pass maybe even a credit with what I have. Fingers crossed.